Why is an IMAP Inbox Only Displaying 10,000 Items When There are Many More Emails on the Server?

Anonymous
2022-05-04T04:23:15+00:00

I have an IMAP email account that is hosted by AOL Mail, which I download into Outlook 365. The AOL Account has emails going as far back as 2015, and until recently all of those emails were visible (and searchable) through Outlook. About 2 weeks ago, I noticed that I could no longer search for emails going back farther than 6 months ago. Those emails are still on the AOL server; I can see them if I use AOL's webmail interface (which is pretty mediocre). But they are no longer downloading into my IMAP inbox. Indeed, at the bottom of the inbox it now says I have 10,000 items. 

                                     [!\[\](https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/40c12e9d-b5a2-4a30-8bc4-4503de01cbbc?platform=QnA

That's the maximum. If I delete say 100 emails, another 100 emails will download from the AOL server but the downloading will stop when I hit 10,000. (When new emails download from the account, older emails are deleted so I'm just about always at 10,000 items). The full set of emails remains on the AOL server.
In my IMAP Account Settings for this email account, I have the "Keep Mail offline" setting pushed all the way to the right at "All".
[!\\ I can't find any setting in Outlook that limits the number of emails. Nor does there appear to be any setting in the AOL account that limits 3rd party IMAP mailboxes to only 10,000 items (at least not one that I can find). New emails are downloading and syncing with the AOL server, so my connection settings appear to be correct.
Is there some kind of Registry setting that is limiting the number of items that will load into this email inbox? I used to have access to all of the emails that were on the AOL server. Is there any way to get that back? One last note. I deleted the AOL account from Inbox, rebooted and then reinstalled the AOL account. It still only downloaded 10,000 items in the IMAP inbox. Also I'm using the most recent version of Outlook 365.
Thanks for any help anyone can provide.](https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/e4efa42d-54c3-4fa7-b54a-ae7d93efb421?platform=QnA)](https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/40c12e9d-b5a2-4a30-8bc4-4503de01cbbc?platform=QnA)

Outlook | Windows | Classic Outlook for Windows | For business

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-06-14T14:10:04+00:00

    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253810183?page=3 

    JonnyW982

    Hello All,

    I have been using AOL mail for over a decade and experience this same problem on all my devices and 3rd party mail apps. I contacted AOL escalated tech support about this issue, and they said "this is working as intended".

    Apparently, AOL changed their imap and pop download limits to 10,000 messages per folder. And they did this without proper advance notice to their free or premium users. They said their web mail or aol client should be used to access or search any email beyond the 10,000 recent email limit.

    .....

    edit: formatting

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-06-14T10:15:14+00:00

    Just as expected - a detached BS response form Yahoo Customer care.

    I am very close to giving this up and will be humbly moving my messages out of the Inbox to folders (20 at a time) for the next 2 years. They got me by the short and curlies after 20+ years of tying all my interactions to this email.

    Cold bureaucracy, greed and neglect to customer needs wins again.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-06-14T03:56:19+00:00

    Michael, I am pretty sure this is not a MS Outlook issue. I have the exact same situation with my Apple IOS native email client. I am limited to seeing the latest 10000 email. So in my thinking this clearly points to the IMAP server as the issue. I run both PC and IOS devices with MS Outlook and Apple native email clients, both clients looking at the same email account.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-06-13T15:57:08+00:00

    I will make another attempt to get through to Yahoo support with the brilliant evidence from Mark_302.

    I will add the info from Mark_302 to the case I have with them. Just curious to see what their response might be, although they have been so blatantly obtuse and untruthful in their prior responses, nothing will surprise me.

    After that, the only avenue to explore that I can think of is to try and escalate it to the corporate level of Yahoo/AOL or Apollo.

    Not interested nor hopeful in pursuing anything with Microsoft based on my prior interactions with them. And, honestly, because I can get no personal benefit because my Outlook 2010 is long out of support

    Additional twist - when I try to move emails out of my Inbox to folders, I am limited to under 20 msgs at a time- definitely new limitation from IMAP server and sure to be part of the same implementation

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-06-13T10:36:25+00:00

    Thanks for this!

    FYI - I've also passed this on to the Apple engineer who was dealing with the issue which is impacting my Apple Mail AOL inbox - he is due to call me back tomorrow so I will see if there is any progress to report then

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